


Come To A Bad End

by gakorogirl



Category: Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica - James A. Owen
Genre: Bad Ending, Gen, Psychological Torture, Torture, everyone dies, maybe avoid if you're squeamish, rated m to be safe, well mostly they die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 16:25:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11467284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gakorogirl/pseuds/gakorogirl
Summary: Nobody tries to think about the series of events that led to Jack's tulpa working with the Echthroi. Nobody tries to think about what must have happened to the rest of the Caretakers as the Night World rose. Nobody-Rated M to be safe because there are a few pretty graphic scenes. (Specific trigger warnings will be added to each chapter.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My god, I didn't know I had it in me to write this kind of thing. I would like to apologize thoroughly to the entire CotIG fandom (you know, all five of the people in it) and also to Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. 
> 
> For writing music I used a lot of the Portal OST and some of the more electronic Steven Universe instrumentals.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Kirke" is, of course, Jack. Not just the bad parts of Jack (because you can't simply split a person into their good and bad qualities- there's always room for overlap) but a wholly broken version of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day someone's going to ask me why I have an irrational personal level of hatred for John Dee and I'm going to have to explain CotIG to them and possibly also this fic. There are a few very concerning things in TDOW and TFD (lines like Dee saying Kirke and Bangs have been "trained" to follow his orders) that imply that. Well. The tulpa-Jack wasn't necessarily evil to start out.
> 
> Trigger warnings for torture. (See end notes for more details.)

John Dee took a step back and looked appreciatively at his work. On the table in front of him was stretched the body of a young man- or more accurately, a boy. Not yet twenty, with straw-colored curls and freckles stark in the lamplight. The boy's hands and feet were tied down, and runes were written across his forehead and along the edges of the table. (At first, the boy had fought. It had been inconvenient. The cat Grimalkin was the one who suggested putting him into a dream state until Dee needed- or _wanted_ \- to wake him.)

It had been harder to reconstruct the tulpa than Dee had anticipated, but the Cabal had finally managed to create a stable form. Tesla and Blake had been invaluable, although both of them showed some distaste for Dee's project. "Don't touch it," he snapped as Grimalkin appeared on the table and began to bat at a loose curl of blond hair falling over the tulpa's face. The cat blinked up at him and twitched the tip of his tail just once before fading away.

Dee gave an irritated sigh. The final step, permanently binding the tulpa's aiua to that of Caretaker Lewis, would be the most difficult in the procedure. (After that, all that remained was to coerce the newly made Caretaker Lewis into giving up his shadow- but that would be less difficult, and perhaps even  _fun._ ) "Where- Nikola! Crowley!" His voice echoed through the house, and he tapped his foot for a moment before Crowley appeared in the doorway. 

"Tesla's working," the man said a little nervously, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Dee. "Are you ready to start the aiua binding?" he asked after a moment.

"As soon as Nikola can get away from his precious experiments," Dee answered.

"He looks a little...young," said Crowley with a gesture at the tulpa. He walked over and curiously tapped its forehead, causing the boy's eyelids to flutter slightly.

Dee shrugged. "I assume this is how Williams imagines his friend. The age he was when they met. It might make him easier to break."

"Do you require my help?" asked another voice, and both men glanced up to see Lovecraft leaning casually against the wall. Grimalkin coiled around the man's shoulders, his yellow eyes fading in and out of existence. Dee had never quite understood Lovecraft's fondness for the Cheshire Cat, and was a little miffed that  _his_ creature seemed to prefer the horror writer.

But he  _would_ need help, and Lovecraft was frankly more skilled in magic than Tesla anyway. (If only he had been able to fully turn Houdini and Doyle to their purpose- the pair were strikingly gifted with psionic ability and would have been able to complete this procedure easily. Ah well, Dee had a strict policy of not crying over spilled milk. And it wasn't as though he  _couldn't_ complete the process without their help.) "If you have the time," he said.

As the Cabal gathered around the semi-conscious tulpa, Grimalkin slipped from Lovecraft's shoulders and padded half-visibly down the hallway. The Cheshire Cat took a regretful glance over his shoulder into the lamplit room, now alive with the sound of soft voices weaving a Binding. The collar around his neck gleamed with rune-magic, and he flicked his ears and slipped soundlessly into the space between stars.

(Far away, the original Jack Lewis paused in the middle of a conversation about epic poetry and pressed a hand to his temple, a twinge of pain biting at the inside of his head. He waved off John's concern, but had lost his train of thought.)

* * *

 "Good," said a voice somewhere above Jack, and he opened his eyes to squint into a haze of honey-colored light. Someone was holding up a lamp, their face cast into stark shadow by the flickering light. "He's awake. How are you feeling, Caretaker Lewis?"

"Decent," Jack mumbled, getting used to the feeling of his voice. His mouth was dry. Tiredness clung to the insides of his eyelids, and he felt too exhausted to even raise his head. He blinked slowly, clearing the blur from his eyes. "Where am I?" 

There was a brief pause, and Jack became aware that his hands were restrained by straps. He yanked at them, the leather biting into his skin, and struggled to raise his head and shoulders a little off the table he was pinned to. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded, more loudly- and then realized that he was looking directly at John Dee. Lovecraft and Tesla were standing behind the Chronographer, Lovecraft looking enthralled and Tesla looking aloof and rather blank.

"I suppose there's no harm explaining it to you," said Dee, his tone very much suggesting that he was eager to explain the details of his plan. "You're a tulpa. A tulpa created by your friend Williams, and incompletely dispersed after he was finished with it. It's a good deal younger than your old body was- perhaps the same age you were when the two of you first met."

Jack glanced down at himself and raised an eyebrow, temporarily distracted. "Charles sees me as _eighteen_?" he demanded. "We're going to have some _words_ when I see him again." He twisted his hands and feet, trying again to loosen the straps chafing against his skin.  _I feel like a pinned butterfly,_ he thought as Dee placed a hand on his forehead and pushed his head back down onto the table.

"Don't struggle too much," advised the Chronographer mildly. "We just want you to do something quite simple."

"And what would that be?" asked Jack, a snarl lying in his voice. His eyes narrowed up at Dee, unwavering.

"Give up your shadow. Oh, don't look at me like that. You've done it before, and it wasn't so bad, was it? You didn't loose control of your body or anything like that. True, you might have made a few mistakes, but aren't you so much more _clever_ now? Smart enough that you can succeed in everything you do- with a little help from the Cabal, of course."

Jack's face twitched furiously and he curled his hands into fists. "I'm never doing that again," he rasped. "My friends are going to track me down any time, and then you'd better be  _careful."_ He raised his head to fix Dee with a steely gaze, and the older man frowned.

"I wouldn't count on your friends," he said. "Remember- you're only a tulpa. Caretaker Williams thinks you've been dispersed. Nobody knows you even  _exist."_

"But- I remember being with them," Jack protested. "I was talking to John just a few minutes ago! _"_

"We split your aiua," Dee replied with a proud smile. "In effect, you're one soul split between two bodies."

"That's not possible."

"Only because nobody dared to try it before."

There was a long silence, and Jack's hoarse breathing was loud and quick in the echoing dust-smelling halls. "I won't give you my shadow," he said after a while, and his voice was certain and steady but his eyes wavered. Dee laughed, low and menacing. He had found the weak point in the little Caretaker, and he intended to use it.

"You act as though you're the  _real_ Jack Lewis," he said, his voice almost a purr. "So heroic." Jack flinched.

"I  _am_ real," he hissed through gritted teeth. Someone rolled up his sleeve, and when he turned his head he saw Tesla fastening a patch to the soft inside of his arm. The scientist looked at him coolly, tilting his head a little as he pushed up Jack's shirt to smooth another patch against his stomach just above the hip. Thin wires trailed from the patches over the edge of the table, to somewhere Jack couldn't see. 

Tesla frowned as Jack tried to twist away, writhing on the table. "Hold still," he said in a cool voice, colored with a slight accent. Jack glared up at him.

"Gone full-on mad scientist, have you?" he demanded. Tesla shrugged and checked the wires.

"Learning all the secrets of the universe is quite the tempting offer," he said. "No matter how I feel about this particular project."

"Out of the way," Dee said, pushing Tesla aside. He straightened one of the patches on Jack's neck and smiled down at the boy. "Now. Are you Clive Staples Lewis, usually known as Jack?"

"Yes."

"Bite down on this," advised Tesla, shoving a piece of white rubber into Jack's mouth.

An instant later pain exploded through him, black and purple fireworks obscuring his sight. His screams were muffled by the rubber between his teeth, but his feet beat frantically against the rune-etched table. For a moment, Jack thought his bones had turned to white light, and that he would finally-

And then it stopped. Jack's body went limp against the restraints, blood dripping from the raw flesh on his wrists and ankles where he had struggled against the bonds. His eyes closed and the frantic rising and falling of his chest was all to show he was still alive. "Sorry," said Tesla, somewhere far away. "That might have been a little much."

Weakly, Jack opened his mouth and turned his head to the side to let the rubber mouthpiece fall onto the table. He started to laugh, the air cold and sparkling in his ragged lungs. "Have to- try harder," he panted.

"Nobody is coming for you," said Dee, almost softly. "You're not  _real,_ not the same way they are. But you could be more. You could be much more."

"Go to  _hell,"_ Jack spat.

He regretted spitting out the rubber mouthpiece. When the shocks subsided, his mouth was heavy with bile and copper-hot blood, and he bared his red teeth at Dee in a kind of manic smile. "Never...break," he mumbled, and his head dropped onto the table with a resounding  _crack._

Dee's smile faded from his face, and he wheeled and paced over to the window to look out on the starlit swamp below the Abbey. Tesla watched him with keen dark eyes, his cool face briefly betraying nervousness. Being around an angry Dee was never a good thing, and he did have a lab to get back to.

"You know," Dee said, and the great black-feathered shape of Loki landed on the windowsill beside him, "We don't really  _need_ you." A lie, of course. The ultimate victory for the Cabal centered around turning the Namer to the Echth side- but Lewis didn't need to know that. "I'd prefer not to waste the trouble the Cabal went to reconstructing you, so if you continue to pretend you're a proper Caretaker hero I could always just give you to Nikola as a lab rat."

Tesla looked down at the boy, shaking and sweat-soaked, and frowned ever so slightly. "I don't need human test subjects," he said in his usual flat voice. Dee shot him a sharp sideways glance and then returned his attention to the tulpa. 

"Or I'm sure I could use you for  _something,"_ he said, in a bored voice bordering on a drawl.

 _Three days. Four days. Maybe more than that. The Cabal hasn't bothered to give him food or water- he doesn't need it, since he isn't really alive. The nights are hardest, staring up into the darkness and listening to_  things  _whispering in the shadows of the room. The smell of wetness and must hangs heavily over everything, and a horrible rotting blood-smell begins to cling to him after the first couple of days._

_Jack almost prefers when Dee is there, talking about the Echthroi and how they will bring Order to the world. (No more suffering, no more poverty, no more sickness. Everyone exactly the same.) Other members of the Cabal come with him sometimes- sometimes two or three Blakes, or Lovecraft or Crowley. After that first session, he doesn't see Tesla._

* * *

 

"You could be great," said Dee, and Jack closed his eyes and thought about the Kilns and tried to imagine the taste of tea even as a scalpel worked its way into the soft flesh beneath his jaw. "Imagine it. No more pain. Free will scarcely exists anyway, you know." He dew out the scalpel, stained pomegranate red, and Jack gave a shuddering sound a little softer than a scream.

"I'd give in, if I were you," a familiar voice murmured from somewhere above Jack's left ear. He twisted his head and his eyes widened as he found himself staring at Grimalkin's paws and smiling head. The cat appeared a little more clearly, looking down at Jack with something almost like pity before purring softly at him. "There's a point where the mortal mind snaps, and you're getting awfully close to it. Better give in now while you still have a little of yourself left."

And he disappeared without a sound.

"You traitor!" Jack screamed at the space where the cat had been. The inside of his throat was dry and tasted of old blood.

"That was an interesting interruption," said Dee, cleaning off the blade with a small square of cloth. Jack looked blankly at him, breath coming in harsh gulps. "So. Let's try this again- will you give your shadow over to the Echthroi?"

Jack raised his head a little and spat at the Chronographer, smiling through garnet-dark teeth. 

Electricity crackled, and through the explosion of pain in his skull (like every part of him was being shredded into stardust and embers) Jack could hear Dee shouting-  _only a reflection- created you- ungrateful-_

If he could have, he would have chuckled. As it was, he only screamed until what was left of his battered voice gave out. And then-  _finally-_ Dee stopped, and rested a hand on Jack's sweat-soaked curls. Shivering, Jack twitched away and dry heaved through his rusty mouth.

"You know," said Dee softly, "I could have your brother brought here too."

Jack looked up at him blearily, and there, at last, was the expression of  _fear_ that Dee had been waiting for. When people were afraid, they made desperate choices.

"You won't have to," whispered Jack after the space of five heartbeats. The shadow on the table beneath him came undone, flowing onto the floor like spilled ink. Dee rested a hand on his obsidian scrying mirror and tilted it toward the shadow, which wavered for a moment- one instant it looked like a man, then a boy of no more than seven, then a great cat- and was sucked into the dark convex surface.

And Jack was still talking, a new edge of steel in his weary rasp of a voice. "But know, John Dee, when we're done- I'm going to break every bone in your body and watch you  _drown_ in blood."

"Oh, get in line," said Dee nonchalantly. "Nikola's death ray practically has my name on it." He raised an eyebrow at Jack. "Anyway, don't you feel so much  _better_ now?"

Jack pondered for a moment, flexing his wrists against the straps. Dee began to loosen the restraints, and a sharp-toothed smile spread over the tulpa's face. "Actually," he said, "I do."

No more  _lonely_ feeling, no more- perhaps melancholy was the word? He had forgotten how loosing your shadow muted your pain, replaced it with energy and  _drive._   (What about  _Warnie,_ he thought briefly, halfheartedly. He didn't really know why Warnie had been quite so important a few minutes before.)

"Wonderful," Dee replied. "And Warnie is safe. Everyone will be safe, once the Echthroi succeed in spreading their influence over the Archipelago and the Summer Country. They might even place you in charge of the Archipelago- wouldn't that be something? I'd keep the Summer Country, of course, but you would make a fine ruler of the throne of Paralon."

Slowly, Jack nodded, and Dee went on. (It wouldn't do to have the Caretaker slip back into chaos so late in the game- better make sure of his loyalty. Dee, of course, had no plan of surrendering any part of his rule to this  _boy,_ but control over the Archipelago would be a powerful bargaining chip.) "You're quite clever, you know. Good with words, and plans. All excellent traits for a ruler."

"Why not put me in charge of everything, then?" asked Jack, sitting up and stretching. "I could use a drink," he added, and the blade-edge of his voice made the comment sound more like a command. Dee faltered for barely a heartbeat and smiled.

"That's for the Echthroi to decide, little one," he said easily. "Just follow the plan and everything will turn out the way it was meant to be- with safety and peace and the ultimate Order. And then  _we_ will learn all there is to know about the universe." (But mostly me, Dee thought with a twitch of his lip. As soon as the Echthroi were finished with the tulpa, he planned to kill him himself. The Cabal had had enough bad experience with supernaturally powerful and emotionally unstable pawns breaking loose and running around space and time.)

The tulpa crossed over to the dusty window and looked out, his face sculpture-hard. The lanternlight turned the glass panes to a crude mirror, and in the reflection on the window it was clear to see that his irises had already turned to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter a character is restrained and electrocuted repeatedly. Torture with a scalpel is mentioned.
> 
> John Dee's obsidian "spirit mirror" is a real item. The song[ Cry for Judas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bptnhUOG2GU) is major mood music for this chapter and for basically all angsty Jack-related things.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The showdown at the edge of the world.  
> Lord Winter comes to Tamerlane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update, for the first time since the beginning of the semester! (I'll try and update my other CotIG fics at some point in the nearish future, too.) Writing music [In the Pines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Yj0TC4BJs) and [this Halloween mashup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SFf1CLrGeI) because apparently I just like creepy folk music for this chapter. There's probably a couple canon inconsistencies, please ignore any you may notice.
> 
> Chapter warnings for character death and general creepiness, and a lot of mentions of blood. Nothing nearly as hard-core as last chapter.

“I need your sword!” Jack called to Charles, who hesitated for a moment before throwing his _katana_ across the gap between them. Jack dodged a savage sideways thrust from “Kirke” and caught the hilt of the weapon in his left hand, crossing the blades in time to catch Caliburn as it whistled down towards his skull. As the swords clashed together, a deep sound like the striking of a gong echoed over Terminus.

A bead of sweat dripped down Jack’s forehead, and he drove his elbow into Kirke’s ribs. The tulpa grunted and stepped back, suddenly on the defensive as Jack’s swords flashed in the golden afternoon light. As he moved toward the edge of the waterfall, a brief smile flitted across Kirke’s face, and Jack gasped and jerked back as a bolt of pain ran through his head.

At once, the tulpa jumped forward and wrested the _katana_ from Jack’s grasp, delivering a savage kick to his rival’s ribs. Jack went sprawling across the dirt, and with a brief glint of his obsidian eyes Kirke drove the slender sword into his palm.

Charles rose to his feet, briefly forgetting Laura Glue on the ground beside him. Mr. Bangs slammed Edmund’s head into the ground with enough force to knock the young Cartographer unconscious and moved to block Charles’ path. “Don’t interfere,” he warned, voice edged with menace. Somewhere at the edge of the island, Rose began to weep.

And then Kirke stomped on Jack’s good wrist, wrenching the sword from his sweat-slick hand. “Poetic, isn’t it?” he asked as he plunged the point of the sword into Jack’s other palm. Jack _screamed,_ ragged and desperate, and took a hoarse breath as Kirke stepped back. The tulpa laughed and tilted his head. “But I don’t think _you’re_ coming back.”

Several things happened at once.

Laura Glue leapt up in a flash of wings and tackled Bangs, and Charles sprinted past them in an attempt to get to Kirke and Jack. Rose buried her face in her hands, and Madoc folded his silver-dripping wings around her to shield them both from view. And Kirke raised Caliburn and brought it down into Jack’s chest with a wet splintering noise, and as he pushed it deeper into the Caretaker’s ribcage the sword exploded into shards of shadow in his hands.

Kirke recoiled as Caliburn dissolved, and then looked up to see Charles bearing down on him with the badgers following. “I’ll give you a few minutes,” he said, catching Charles’ fist in one hand. “He’s going to die soon, so I would make your goodbyes quick.” And then he gave a smile that looked far too _Jack-_ like and added, “After all- I have a world to remake.”

Bangs tore himself free from a stunned Laura Glue and ran after Kirke, his face twisted in an unreadable mask of emotion.

Turning, Charles saw that Uncas and Fred were already gathered around Jack, rapidly flipping through a Little Whatsit. He crossed over to join them, and Jack’s eyelids fluttered weakly. The ground of Terminus was hot and sticky with blood.

“But Scowler Jack is a _portrait,”_ Fred was saying. “There’s _nothing_ for portraits!”

“Jack,” Charles said softly. “How can- you can’t kill a portrait with a sword, it shouldn’t be possible!” With a frown, Jack turned his head to look up at his friend.

“It’s not the swords,” he said with some effort. “Kirke’s sapping the rest of my aiua. He’ll have it all soon.” He blinked, trying weakly to struggle against the swords driven through his hands, and his breath rattled. “Here- Charles, help me pull these out? I’d rather not die like a pinned butterfly.”

Charles gritted his teeth and took the first blade, and Jack badly stifled a cry as he drew it out and threw it aside. “I’m sorry,” murmured Charles, tear-choked as he tried to get a grip on the hilt of the _katana_. “If I hadn’t been such an-”

“Stop blaming yourself for everything, will you?”

“Uncle Jack,” Rose said softly behind them. Madoc stood behind her, holding his injured wing at an awkward angle behind him. His face was rigid and something close to _anxious_ , and he rested a hand on Rose’s shoulder as she hesitated, stricken by the sight of Jack bleeding out onto the ground.

“Rose,” he answered, with a cough. The edges of his body seemed almost transparent, as though they were only half-formed, and his eyes seemed far too pale. For a moment, Jack struggled to sit up, and Charles looped an arm around his shoulders and helped to pull him upright. “ _Dear_ Rose. I’m- sorry you had to see that.”

“We’ll stop him,” said Rose through her tears, and her dark eyes were very fierce. “We always win in the end.”

“Maybe- not this time,” Jack mumbled. He fell back against Charles and tried to say something else that dissolved into wet coughing. One of his shattered hands wandered up and left a smudge of garnet-dark blood along Charles’ cheek.

“Oh, we will,” Charles said with more conviction than he felt. _Even if it takes another eighty thousand years._ He cast a brief glance in the direction Kirke had gone, a kaleidoscope of light blooming across the sulphur-yellow sky.

And Jack Lewis, _Caveo Principia_ of the Imaginarium Geographica, melted into a shower of gold that was swept away westward over the edge of the world.

 

Kirke winced and pressed his fingers to his temple. Bangs tried to say something, but the other tulpa waved him off with a snarl. “Just a twinge,” he said in a low voice, going back to the work of arranging the Archipelago’s islands. “I feel fine- in fact, I feel _excellent._ The other part of me must have finally died out.”

He stretched, catlike, and then plunged his hands into the box. Light ran up beneath his skin, towards his heart, and he gritted his teeth and raised his hands with an island hanging between them. “Do we need this one?”

“I’m not sure,” said Bangs. “Loki should be here to tell us the plan.”

“I don’t need a plan,” Kirke said a little sharply, and squinted at the island heavy in his scarred palms. “This is Gil’ead,” he added. “It should go just- here.” His shoulders slumped for a moment as the weight of it slipped from his hands, and a mountainous shape appeared near the horizon.

“Don’t you _understand_ ?” he asked, sharp-toothed and smiling. Bangs took a step back, not wanting to glimpse the black-hole eyes behind Kirke’s dark glasses. “Dee is dead. Grimalkin is- dead, I think, and Crowley too. And the Cabal is gone. _I_ report directly to the Echthroi now. I am their- their _prophet._ ”

Bangs, the tulpa who was once the first Imago who was also the man still waiting in the inn at the edge of heaven, looked over his shoulder at the small shapes gathered around the edge of the waterfall. “Dee is dead,” he repeated, softly, and something small and knotted inside him came suddenly undone. He drew a knife and stabbed toward Kirke’s side. “I can do anything I _want,”_ Bangs screamed, making another pass at Kirke as the other man leapt back, his movements hampered by the amethyst box. “We can go back, we can turn around and-”

“Oh,” said Kirke, taking off his tinted glasses and dropping them onto the ground. “You have a _shadow.”_

“You can do whatever you want-” Bangs shouted, more loudly, and Kirke kept moving backwards as darkness roiled in his hungering eyesockets. ( _“Kill him,”_ roared Madoc from not too far away, running up the beach toward them. Charles and Edmund were following the Dragon, skidding on the loose sand. Kirke pressed his lips together in the first expression of concern Bangs had ever seen on his face.)

“Unfortunately for you,” said Kirke coldly, “I rather like this job.” His eyes flashed, and Bangs gave a shuddering gasp as he dissolved into black smoke. Kirke wheeled and Madoc ducked out of the way as black energy crackled across the gap between them, turning a long swath of sand to a dark glass.

“Get back,” Charles said tensely, catching Edmund’s arm and pulling him away. “Laura, Rose, I want you to-”

“Run back to the Last Inn,” finished Kirke, his voice cold. Madoc moved between him and Rose, spreading silver-laced wings to block the tulpa’s line of sight. Kirke arched an eyebrow, his fingers tapping the edge of the box. “I want to be clear,” he said. “I won’t be this _kind_ again, but I’m busy at the moment. So, I want all of you to go back to the Inn, and step over that threshold, and don’t ever come back.”

He smiled, teeth like splintered quartz. Madoc trembled and abruptly folded up his wings, turning to catch Rose in his arms. With an exhausted huff, Kirke went back to his work. (He’d always gotten the locations of Felimath and Doorn switched in his head, and he wanted his Archipelago to be _perfect_. Doorn was to the west, he thought.)

“Come on,” said Charles in a low voice. “We need to get out of here.”

And they  _ran._

* * *

“We’ll need to seal these rings away somewhere once they’ve been recorded,” said Bert tersely. The atmosphere in the room was somber. They would not be able to hold Tamerlane House against the Echthroi for long, and there was no running away for the Caretakers who still resided  in the Pygmalion Gallery.

“What if we move the portraits through the trumps?” Ransom was asking Basil, his fingers drumming thoughtfully on the tabletop. “I can get us into a Soft Place, but the Echthroi are like to follow.”

“Without the Ruby Armor-” started Shelley, and then fell silent.

“What if we hide the rings beneath Oxford?”

“It’s too dangerous, he’ll know where to-”

“Do you think the recordings will last until-”

“What if-”

“If we could have found the-”

“There’s a ship coming,” said Hawthorne, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “It looked to me to be the _Black Dragon.”_

Unexpectedly, Rose stood. “Finish the rings,” she said, stone-faced. “I can distract him long enough for you to hide them.” She ducked past Hawthorne before he could stop her, and after a moment Charles went after her.

“I have an idea,” Ray was saying behind them as they came up the staircase just in time to come face-to-face with Kirke.

“Charles,” said the man who wore Jack’s face. He had put his glasses on again, but there was no disguising the jagged edges of his smile. In one gloved hand, he held a prehistoric knife with a triangular blade of flaked obsidian.

“Lord Winter,” Charles said icily.

“I told you to go to the Last Inn,” Lord Winter murmured, almost sadly, and looked at Rose as he pressed the point of the knife against one fingertip. Black blood beaded against the blade. “You had one chance, and you used it- for what? _Hope?”_

“Hope,” Charles agreed.

They could fix it, next time around. The Caretakers would hide the rings somewhere safe, where none of them would go missing or broken, and in the future there would be another Charles and another Rose and Edmund and-

They could find the rings and the warning. They would set the timeline back the way it was meant to be.

“Stand back,” Rose said, icily, and threw out a hand towards Lord Winter. “I could cast you into Deep Time,” she continued, but she did not move forward. For a moment, the man’s smile vanished, and black smoke boiled up over the edges of his dark glasses.

“Kairos time has come undone,” he said presently. “Your powers have much diminished from those of the Imago of old, and this knife was made for killing gods.” Charles moved quickly to stand in front of Rose.

Swift as lightning, Lord Winter caught hold of Charles’ arm, twisting it diagonally backwards, and Charles cried out and doubled over, arching his back to struggle against the grim pressure on his shoulder. Rose grabbed his sword and angled it at Lord Winter.

“I could always use an adept and an expert in interdimensionality,” said Lord Winter, almost pleasantly. “The Echthroi would be merciful.”

Charles kicked him in the shin.

The man who had been Kirke and before that Jack yelped and bared his teeth. In the moment of distraction, Rose leapt forwards, the tip of her sword slicing centimeters from his cheek. He dodged the blow and stepped  sideways into the  antechamber, dragging Charles with him.

“Rose?” Lord Winter asked, pleasantly. His voice showed a little strain as he pressed the knife to Charles’ throat. “It’s really much better to be Lloigor than to keep living your painful mortal life, you know. I haven’t felt _pain_ for years, or sadness.”

“I don’t think you’ve felt anything in a long time,” Rose said, closing slowly in. “You don’t remember what it’s like to have emotions.”

Briefly, Lord Winter’s face twisted. “I’m feeling awfully _irritated_ right now,” he snarled. And in a brief one-two movement he stabbed the knife into Charles’ neck above the shoulder.

 _Run,_ Charles mouthed, and Lord Winter dropped him to the floor and flipped the knife to angle it at Rose. His other hand crept up towards his glasses.

For a moment, Rose looked at him. He fell still beneath her gaze, and almost turned back to look at Charles on the floor. And then he hissed, shaking his head as though coming out of deep water, and struck at her with the knife.

Before the blood-smeared blade made contact, Rose vanished, silently.

Lord Winter stopped and looked around, wary. There was no movement, except the sounds of hurried speech many floors below. Through the open door drifted Loki, its raven-form shed and transformed into a dozen irregular shapes that radiated darkness. “ _Where has she gone?”_ the Echthros demanded.

“I am not sure,” he said.

 _“I do not sense her in this Time,”_ said the Echthros after a long pause. _“There are still others downstairs. Kill them.”_

* * *

Some time later, Lord Winter emerged from the great doorway of Tamerlane House and looked out upon the sea. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and cleaned the clotted blood from the  flat of his knife. Several of the Caretakers  had made it through the trumps, and he would need to track them down before they found their way into an alternate timeline. John, Ray, three of the Blakes, Dickens, and Doyle- but  _not_ Houdini.

 _"You were not focused,"_ Loki whispered. Beside it floated another Echthros called Chernabog, silver eyes blinking on all sides of its pyramid head.

"I will catch them soon enough," said Lord Winter with a casual shrug. He had focused, at first, on the members of the Cabal who had defected or been captured by the Caretakers- Dee was dead, so he would take his blood-tithe from the rest of the Cabal. And in order to corner Houdini he had been forced to let Doyle escape. He could feel the displeasure of the Echthroi, and for the moment he did not further press the issue.

 _"Your task is to subjugate this earth,"_ said Chernabog, the first time it had spoken directly.  _Spoken,_ perhaps, was not the right word- the knowledge was dropped, burning, into Lord Winter's mind.  _"You will bring down all the wrath of heaven upon us if you are not careful. For now, we will place this world in quarantine. Neither your prey nor you will be able to escape its confines, nor will any being from beyond the planet's physical bounds be able to intervene."_

 _"Wait-"_  started Lord Winter, but there was a great sound like stone being splintered by ice and chains ran suddenly through the heavens, tearing apart the ice-blue dome of the sky. Likewise, shackles appeared around his wrists _,_ shining for a moment as black as death. After a moment, they faded from view, but the bitter weight of them stayed.

"I am the Lord of light and Shadow," he said in a low and furious voice, turning his back to the Echthros. "You cannot keep me contained."

 _"You are stronger than the Cabal, indeed,"_ Loki whispered. Its voice still sounded like the rattling of feathers.  _"But you, small one, will never be stronger than the Echthroi. The Imago has lost herself in Deep Time, but she may gather enough strength to return, someday. You will kill her when she does."_

Chernabog growled, trembling at a frequency just lower than human hearing, and Lord Winter winced and turned back to looking at the sea. "Of course," he said. In his hand, the knife rested in the way that darkness rests in the curve of the moon.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd really appreciate if you'd leave a comment or scream at me on tumblr @frosttrix!
> 
> I can't promise a steady update schedule for this fic, simply due to the fact that I'm starting college and I have a lot of stuff to work on. (If you're hoping for something fun with the boys, instead of This Shit, I have a different multi-chapter fic in the works as well as something I'm writing for Charles' birthday.)


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